Priorities for the Air Force’s Future Force Design

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Heather Penney:

Good afternoon. I’m Heather “Lucky” Penney, Director of Studies and Research at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. And I’d like to welcome everyone to this panel discussion, Priorities for the Air Force’s Future Force Design. Because this is an exciting time for the Air Force because for the first time in over a generation, the Air Force is undergoing a massive modernization effort to equip the service with the tools that it needs to fly, fight, and win. From uncrewed systems like CCA to next generation aircraft like the B-21 and F-47 and the most advanced F-35s rolling off the line, this is truly a once in generation moment for our airmen.

That said, it couldn’t arrive at a more critical time. Our airmen face unrelenting demands across the world today, while the service must prepare for a growing threat environment that ranges from bad actors and their proxies to peer adversaries who wish to reorder the globe. The service must strike a delicate balance between ready to fight tonight while also developing and delivering next generation technologies on time and at scale. To discuss how the Air Force and its key industry partners will tackle these issues, I’m joined on stage by Mr. Thomas Lawhead, Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Integration, Strategy and Requirements, Headquarters Air Force. Vulture, thank you.

We also have General Mike Holmes, retired Air Force, now Senior Advisor for Boeing Defense. And finally, Lieutenant General Jason Armagost, Deputy Commander, Air Force Global Strike Command. Gentlemen, thank you. So Vulture, I’d like to start with you because several years ago, Air Force senior leadership began to focus on this future force design. What drove this focus and how did that differ from how the Air Force had previously approached their requirements?

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

So thanks for that question and thanks for the opportunity to sit on this panel, Lucky. Appreciate it. And to be with these two fine gentlemen is just a great way to wrap up this week, I think. So I think the biggest driver for what is the future force design is the changing strategic operational environment. If you think back 36 years ago to where we were at the end of Desert Storm, we were a very platform-centric force, and rightfully so. Not only was the force built on platforms, our recapitalization of the force, what you would call the force design, was kind of nose to tail, “Hey, I’ve had an F-4, I need something better than that. Let’s get an F-15. The F-15’s timing out, I need something better than that. Let’s get an F-22.”

The environment that we see today with increased threats, both in terms of range, capability and capacity, as well as the system’s nature of the way we’re going to fight, any fight in the future is going to be multi-domain, it’s going to be multi-spectral, and it’s going to be joint and with our allies and partners as always. So to field that force, we can’t … I mean, you could actually look at it from a component commander standpoint, right? So again, 30 years ago, the air component commander could ensure he had the proper forces in place. He had time to do so. He could build an ATO that set up his part of the joint force commander’s plan. The maritime component commander would do the same, the land component commander would do the same, and all you had to do was integrate across those component plans.

Now, again, multi, all domain, all the components are involved in each of these key mission threads that must be accomplished to achieve the joint force commander’s objectives. So you need a force that is able to cross all those domains and close those key capability gaps. And I would say that is the key driving factor to why we have the force design that we are embarking on over the last really five to eight years.

Heather Penney:

So gentlemen, how are you seeing the challenges the Air Force faces?

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

All right. I’ll go next, I guess. I want to also acknowledge a great boss that I’m sitting up here with and a great partner over the last few years as well. And then Heather, I think you should call out the reports that you and Gonzo have done the last couple of months as a context for this discussion, and I would recommend people go read those because it will give you everything you need from whatever this discussion becomes. But I would say, okay, so sometimes we fail to look, I think, corporately at the long range or long-term historical aspects even of what it is we’re undertaking when we talk about force design, because sometimes we act like competition is a newly arisen thing, but the competition with our near-peer adversaries for sure has been underway maybe geopolitically forever, since the world grew to beyond horse and buggy type distances and the ability to travel great distances.

So the competition is underway. So what does that mean? And then what does it mean for conflict? And I think what we are going to talk about here today in that environment is that the ability to make resourcing and organizational choices about how you allocate scarce and really precious things to make a systemic difference over time through competition primarily so that conflict is deterred, but then should conflict become necessary, the cost for the adversary to embark on that is too high as they assess it and the probability of success is preferably zero, but from their perspective, it’s also their likelihood to be able to pull it off is too low. So that’s all underway.

And I would say that the future choices we’re making about the systems that we allocate strategic choices and resources against will play out in exactly that way. So to back it back into competition, we’re going to recontest what the adversaries see as denied airspace, in our case for the Air Force. And then should conflict become necessary, hold at risk targets that are precious to them so that the cost becomes too high. And so that’s the context that I think about all of these more detailed choices we’re going to talk about.

Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks, Heather. Thanks fellow panelists. Thanks AFA for putting this on and mostly thanks to all of you for still being here on Wednesday afternoon. It’s been said no greater love has one man or a woman for another than to come to a Wednesday afternoon panel at the AFA. So I think Vulture and Armo probably have a lot of fans that stuck out here. This challenge about having force design, force design is something that we talk about. How do we see the future? How do we want to work for it? But then it’s also something that maybe not everybody really wants. The art and the challenge of it is being specific enough that it gives guidance to shape choices and set priorities in the future, not be so loose that anybody’s idea can fit under it and they can say, “I’m included in the force design, so I should get the money.”

But not be so specific that it keeps people from coming up with new ideas on how to accomplish it and new ways to make the things fit together. So Vulture and his team, they work hard to think through the issues and then they present it. And then if you aren’t careful, it’s something that people feel like it impinges on their ability to make choices or pursue their agenda. So ultimately you’re trying to balance this idea of how do we get ready for the future while still maintaining capability and capacity we need now for current threats and an idea that’s specific enough, but not too specific.

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

I’d just like to piggyback on General Holmes’ comments. So in the joint lexicon, force design is in that seven to 15 plus year period, right? Force employment now to two years force development in really that first fight up. So as you look at the force design, you’re looking really at something that’s out there in the 15-ish year point, right? It’s that beacon on the hill. This is where we’re headed. So you need the agility, and this is the challenge. You need the agility from today through that 15 year period and beyond to react to changes in threats, to react to changes in the operational environment, to react to new technology.

So while we say force design, that’s kind of out there. Every year, we plan on putting out annual force design guidance to help prioritize to General Holmes’ point, to help prioritize that POM’s modernization efforts. And then I think really the other challenge, Armo, to your point, is from an institutional standpoint, what is the balance between that readiness tonight to fight and then that readiness tomorrow as we modernize and ensure that our kids and grandkids have the force that they need, that wins, deters, and if necessary, kicks butt.

Heather Penney:

So what are those key priorities, attributes, characteristics that you’re looking for in the force design? Sir, I like how you mentioned we need to be specific, but not overly specific because if you’re going to inform the POM, you need to talk about airplanes, sensors, data links, avionics, things like that, that are specific so that we can actually procure them and have something to develop towards. So how do you define those characteristics and attributes?

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

Yeah, great question, right? And I’ll maybe attack it from a general level and then to a more specific level. So generally, the force design and the forces that lead up to it, again, if you took a snapshot every year, hopefully you’re still marching towards that force design or something has changed, right? But it has to be agile, it has to be survivable, it has to be lethal. The whats and the eaches that you talk to are the specifics that we get out of the joint war fighting concept, our Air Force future operating concept and the supporting concepts that go in there. Those identify the capability gaps that we see down the road.

Then we have to do the actual capability development with our joint partners to start to fill in those capability gaps. This gets back to really to the challenge. As you lay out all the required missions across the entire joint war fighting concept, in that multi-domain, multi-spectral fight, where are the specific capability gaps? Who’s working on them? Which service? Is it multi-service? Is it with potentially the allies and partners that would be ideal so that we’re not creating redundant capabilities, but we’re in a synergistic situation with them?

And filling in each of those gaps in a timely manner so that you can fight that across that entire mission thread, whether it’s counter maritime, counter land, counter air, counter HAVA, HAVA protect, et cetera. So each of those mission threads has to become whole at some point and it has to be obvious that we can deter with those capabilities so that hopefully we don’t have to fight. Nobody’s really going to like that war, but if we do have to fight, that we deny the enemy’s objectives and we achieve victory.

Heather Penney:

Yeah. So that we can win. I’m glad … I’m sorry, Armo, go ahead.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

Yeah, I was just going to say, so he has the unfortunate reality of having to deal with the Pentagon and that environment, and it’s brutal. So building those scenarios and those eaches of the sensors and the platforms and the specifics of the budgetary hits for each of those things is brutal contact sport. But if you elevate it back to strategy, which is kind of the lens I bring in kind of to, how do we encapsulate what all of those individual choices means?

I think the thing that I, in my mind, from our long range strike perspective, how do I want to evolve? We need to move from the ability to raid and do pulses to have campaign effects so that the pressure that we can apply from a strategic perspective is such that it is, again, reduces the probability of success and imposes costs that are too high on the adversary. So the luxury I have being not in the Pentagon is to look back and say, “Okay, what are the totality of effects that we can bring to bear from a long range strike perspective here, in my perspective, into that system of systems that is the brutal reality of contact with the joint staff and resourcing decisions?”

Heather Penney:

So going back to survivability and lethality, this gets to the notion that we’ve heard a lot of folks say that stealth is dead. And when they’re talking about their stealth, they’re talking about RCS, they’re talking about shaping materials, but B-21, F-47, still very stealthy. How do you see that and how would you respond to that assertion that stealth doesn’t matter anymore?

Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, USAF (Ret.):

Nope. So I think you can … If you’re making that argument, if you’re making the argument that it’s very hard to take one airplane alone and afraid and show up over a target undetected and unmolested and achieve effects and come back, it’s pretty hard. Multi-band sensors and all the tools that are brought to bear to find things, but there’s a difference between finding things and targeting things. And I think the logic is that stealth is still, or reduced cross-section, reduced ability to be detected is still necessary, but not sufficient on its own.

You have to put electronic warfare along with it. That’s necessary, but not sufficient on its own. You’re still going to have to do suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses in the air and on the ground. And so you have to fight to do the things that we’re asked to do in the tough environments, we’re asked to do it. And that means not just stealth, but kinetic, non-kinetic tools, a mix of air and space tools, the electronic warfare that goes to do it. It’s hard to imagine as good as crews were and as many other tools that were brought to bear on the Iran strikes, getting that done without the reduced signature of some of the assets that we’re involved in.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

And I would just add, I would say stealth is actually table stakes in the environment we’re talking about where our space is attempted to be denied. It’s physics and it’s engineering and it’s the baseline for how you get in those places. But to General Holmes’ point, you have to now have a fighting approach to get your way in. And part of what we’ve lost since the peace dividend has been this. We’ve kind of had the luxury of going from a threat-based approach to problem sets and going to a capabilities-based approach, which means, hey, if we could design, how could we make use of a cheap JDAM with a laser range finder to attack a moving target?”

And so we figured out how to do those kinds of things during the global war on terror. That is not a threat-based approach. What General Holmes is talking about is fighting your way in, which is a suppression of enemy air defenses approach, which accounts for the totality of the threat, which is the air threat, the maritime threat, the information environment, and the spectrum environment. And so again, stealth, I would say, is table stakes to enter that fight.

Heather Penney:

But you also sort of mentioned electromagnetic and negative warfare, which MSO is going to be very important. How do you see integrating electronic warfare and electromagnetic spectrum management and battle management into the future?

Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, USAF (Ret.):

Many of you have probably seen a chart that was put together several years ago that shows all the pieces of the electromagnetic spectrum that the US uses and then shows a Chinese system that was designed to thwart our ability to operate in that system. As we go forward, I think part of the future is going to be multi-band sensors and emitters so that you’re not limited to operating in just the X-band or just one band to be able to operate more broadly across the spectrum and to be able to sense more broadly across the spectrum so you can see where the enemy’s operating that day and where the holes are that you can fit in.

So I think we’ll see people responding to force design to try to acquire systems with multi-band sensors and multi-band emitters. And I think more and more then, we’ll see cognitive algorithms applied to that to try to go find where the space is that you can operate in the spectrum on any given day.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

Yes, to that. But then I would also say from our perspective, again, as the nuclear command, so we start from a different baseline and then move forward into that discussion from a conventional perspective so that we can connect strategic deterrence on the nuclear side to conventional deterrence, which stops a fight. And so to do that, I think that the really important thing is to say, okay, first off, we have to be able to operate and hold at risk on the worst day the world has ever seen. That’s the starting point.

So inherent to that is a lot of that approach as we move into the nuclear modernization of the future of that, but it’s the ability to have organic kill chains so that you’re not dependent on a strategic attack into space or something like that where you could be taken off the table. And so starting from that position, I think gives us a lot of power to have really rich discussions about how we connect that conventional deterrence all the way to our strategic deterrent.

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

I completely agree. If I think back to the days when we were flying pointy-nose planes. I had an EW jammer. It was self-protection only, right? The effects that we need to bring on the battlespace now need to be broad, need to be kinetic and non-kinetic, and they all need to be battle managed. This actually gets back to the challenges, right?

So as we command and control these fights of the future, not only is it going to be kinetic, it’s going to be non-kinetic, it’s going to be those EW effects, and we’re going to have to understand what is working and what isn’t working and that enemy order of battle to ensure that we can get forces going forward to their targets appropriately.

Heather Penney:

So Vulture, you had mentioned mission threats, which is the decomposition of the functions and tasks that need to be done and successfully executed to accomplish a particular mission set. When you place that in a threat-based analysis that allows you to understand how you can remove and replace or substitute or create different force mixes in order to be able to accomplish that particular mission thread. So Armo, you had talked about organic kill chains and penetrating air capability. How does that fit into your vision of the future force design?

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

So always, I think we should inherently believe that we shouldn’t create external dependencies on platforms. However, that being said, we can capitalize on joining kill chains from across platforms, kind of to Vulture’s point about how do we do long range kill chain and how do we battle manage? Those are strategic moves we can make.

However, the organic kill chain piece becomes exceptionally powerful with the inside force. When you have the ability to not have those external dependencies from space or from over the horizon to be able to hold at risk targets and understand the space you are entering to create those effects at the point where they need to be created. And so that just becomes an exceptionally powerful thing with the penetrating force.

Heather Penney:

Vulture, what are the trade-offs or how do you see that balance between these penetrating organic kill chains as well as the need to create long range kill chains and have standoff capability? What’s the collaboration between the two?

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

Yes. So it seems when we have these conversations, everybody wants to get to, “Okay, what’s your ratio of penetrating versus standoff forces?” And it’s actually changes over time, depends on the threat, depends on the time period of the conflict, time of day even, to some extent. You need both. War game after war game, modeling and simulation after modeling and simulation tells us we need both. So we need a force, to Armo’s point, we need a force that can execute the long range kill chain and then on our worst day, that can continue to execute an organic kill chain and we need them both at the same time.

If you look at how we’re going to generate combat power, we are not going to be able to bring effects over a broad period of time continuously. We’re going to have to regenerate forces into that threat environment. We’re going to have to be able to create effects within the highly contested environment, and we’re going to have to bring in that long range standoff capability as well. All of that so that we keep the enemy’s heads down and achieve our objectives so that they can’t achieve their objectives.

Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. And I just think about the different kinds of targets you’re going after too. Fixed targets with known GPS coordinates are a lot better for standoff weapons, mobile intelligent, hard to find targets, mobile ballistic missiles, mobile counter space systems, mobile counter air systems, if you try to go after them with standoff weapons, you become dependent on the long range kill chain, which as Armo’s said, you want to have access to it, but you don’t want your actions to depend on that being up when you need it that day.

So I think penetrating systems give you some flexibility and they also allow national decision makers to negotiate and signal. You can say, “We launched the B-21s. Do you want to change your mind?” It’s too late to say that after you launch the standoff weapons or you can loiter overhead and force things to just keep people to keep their heads down instead of using the systems that they have. So I think we’ll need a mix.

Heather Penney:

Well, it also comes down to the effects and kinetics that you’re looking for, right? I mean, there’s no way we could have targeted Natanz or any of the Iranian targets with any kind of standoff because of the level of kinetics and the weight of the warhead that we needed to be able to achieve those effects. So I think there are trade-offs, but they’re not in opposition to each other. They’re complimentary.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

Yeah. And I would just pile on that, Heather. So what are targets doing? What are they becoming? They’re becoming mobile and they’re becoming buried. And those are two very, very different problem sets.

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

No, I’m good.

Heather Penney:

All right. Very good. So using that as a way to talk about the need for penetrating air power. So specifically, we’ve got B-2s, B-21s, F-47s. I’d like to hear about how this family of systems would work. And for example, specifically how F-47 will complement the B-21.

Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, USAF (Ret.):

Sure. From my perspective, it goes back to where we started. Reduced signature is necessary, but not sufficient. Electronic warfare is necessary and not sufficient, and you’re going to have to fight your way in together. So it’s got to be a family of systems and air superiority and making that family of systems work is not just about what happens over the target area too. If you’re going to launch from anywhere, you’re going to have to think about defending your launch point, both kinetic and non-kinetically.

And then you can’t afford to give the enemy a sanctuary where they can fly their command and control airplanes or their long-range bombers and launch cruise missiles because we’re unable to challenge them for air superiority in that area. So certainly complimentary and certainly they’ll have to fight together to accomplish the tasks that we give them.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

Yeah. And I would add that a family of systems is going to kind of be inherently by structure and access from ground places, a coalition building effort. And so that’s very powerful in and of itself. It’s powerful in competition. It’s powerful in war fighting, and it’s powerful actually in spreading the problem set across the broader front than the adversary would prefer, whether that is a small area of a strait or it is a broad front of in Europe. When you can spread that out through a coalition and the structure you build from that family of systems, that just provides numerous options to decision makers.

Heather Penney:

General Holmes, you said the words air superiority, so now we got to scratch that itch, right? What’s the value of air superiority today? We hear a lot of folks say air denial is good enough and especially when we’re talking about going into those high threat areas, the very dense areas of the Pacific. What’s the role of air superiority there?

Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, USAF (Ret.):

My short response to that, Heather, would be that it provides options for people. It gives you flexibility and it makes everything else possible. It’s certainly, I’m not going to argue that it wins on its own, but it’s hard to imagine, again, doing the things that they’ve asked our Air Force to do over the last several years without being able to provide that freedom of action for everybody to go operate.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

Yeah, I would like to add on that too. So Field Marshall Montgomery in World War II in North Africa said, “If we lose control of the air, we lose the war and we lose it quickly.” I think that will remain true for a long time, but so what is control of the air? I actually kind of back off a little bit in my mind because of the complexity of the threats to not necessarily air superior, but control of the air to do something, right? To hold a target at risk.

And you can do that through a weapon that is a long range standoff weapon that can survive through that environment in a timely manner. And then you can do it through a family of systems that operates as a system to attack that denied space and then confront the cognitive challenge that becomes from the inside force.

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

I’d just add, so the complexity of achieving air superiority, I think is really what we’re driving at with the force design, right? So it’s not just having the F-47 and CCAs, it’s being able to get after the enemy’s long-range kill chain. It’s ensuring that our long-range kill chain is both robust and resilient. It’s ensuring that we have organic capabilities when all our long-range kill chains are down. And absent any of those pieces, you can’t achieve air superiority. So we will continue to build all these capabilities and be able to generate combat sorties from the basis of our choosing so that we can provide air superiority to the joint force.

Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, USAF (Ret.):

And if I could, Heather, I’d also talk about air superiority in time. We’ve said as an air force, and it’s hard to argue with, that against really sophisticated threats, we may be able to achieve the superiority we need at certain places in certain times in a matter of a moment now. But if you look at what it took to win the campaign against Japan in World War II, it took us from Pearl Harbor four years to get the air superiority we needed to fight our way across the Pacific.

If you look at the European campaign, it took us four years to get the air superiority we needed to get across the English Channel. So there’s that limited duration and geography air superiority maybe today in one mission, but if you want to win the campaign, you probably have to achieve that greater ability to control the air and deny the enemy’s use of it.

Heather Penney:

And that’s a combination of both the physical attributes of the aircraft, right? So the physical attributes of the aircraft have to be relevant to the geography of the battle space. You’ve got to be able to go the distance, you’ve got to be able to have the endurance. In World War II, until we got the P-51s with drop tanks, we couldn’t accompany B-17s and B-24s to their target areas, and therefore we kept on having high loss rates for those bombers. So I think that that really speaks to the value of numbers. How do we get iron on the ramp in relevant numbers?

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

Is that a question?

Heather Penney:

It is. Yeah. I’ve got my own thoughts, but this panel is yours.

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

So how do we get iron on the ramp? So the sub-question to that is which ramps? Is this a procurement issue or is this a deployment ACE kind of issue? I submit it’s probably both. How do we work through getting the capabilities that the joint force needs? So as probably everybody’s heard, we’re doing requirements reform, we’re doing acquisition reform. I would submit what we’re really doing is not two different reforms, but capability development reform together. So the requirements folks in A5 are buried into Luke Cropsey’s acquisition reform team and vice versa. So we can’t do those things separately.

We also have to have and be embedded with the resourcers so that we generate the requirements, we work through what the acquisition professionals and vendors can actually provide, and then we apply the appropriate resources to those capabilities. Ultimately, hard choice is going to be made. Don’t forget that we still need to fund as, a priority, readiness tonight while we fund modernization. So we’ll be fighting downstairs in the Pentagon like junkyard dogs for the money to be able to do that because frankly, the joint force relies on the US Air Force and the US Space Force. Period, dot. The joint force is not moving without the Department of the Air Force capabilities.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

Yup.Go ahead, Sir.

Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, USAF (Ret.):

There’s an engagement part of this. Our friend, John Tirpak, in his valedictory at Air Force Magazine said the Air Force needs to get better at telling its story. I was reading that last week and you can make that case. I’m from the school that says the Air Force has just not been given enough resources to recapitalize and main readiness and capacity at the same time. So there’s storytelling that has to be done. Fortunately, the Air Force is in a pretty good place now. You can argue about the Afghan withdrawal mission and how it was conceived, but does anybody think we could have gotten the people out of there without air mobility command and the Air Force assets to be able to get all those people and move them out under pressure?

The strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities, the strikes that convince the Houthis in Yemen to stop shooting at our traffic in the Red Sea, the recent strike against Venezuela. So we have stories to tell. I think we’ve learned over the last few years, I’ve watched our airstaff get much better at engaging with analysis, doing real analysis that says why A is better than B and why you should invest in A. And then finally, we have to do our part still, which means we got to show some acquisition successes. We’ve been given money to buy the B-21, by all accounts it’s going great. There are other programs that are making their way on track. There are others, some that aren’t, that we need to put attention on and show that we can be good stewards of taxpayers’ money.

And then we’ve got to take a look at Air Force processes. I’ve grind an ax a lot that a lot of our Air Force processes were built in 1942 when we were going to train 10,000 pilots a year and we could afford a lot of specialization. And that worked pretty well up through about Desert Storm where we had 138 fighter squadrons and the equivalent numbers and bombers and the mobility force. But when you cut that force way down, can we still afford some of the specialization that we have in training pipelines and other places? Other air forces that are not as big as we are have figured out how to do it. I think we’re going to have to look at some things here.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

Yeah. And I’ll bring it back inside the fight up and say, if you look at the readiness and resourcing for the future balance, you can do some very different things with what you currently have, which changes the calculus for the numbers as they are on the ramp today. And I’m pretty excited about a lot of the things I’m seeing, the choices being made to resource differently.

For example, the B-2 and the B-1 and the B-52 with weapons that will present real challenges with capabilities in comms and sensors that will present real challenges. And those things are more quickly and reasonably attainable on a timeline that doesn’t rely on production on the defense industrial base. So it’s not one or the other necessarily. We can do something different with what we have to create challenges for the adversaries.

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

And just to pile on, all you have to do is go back down to the floor and take a look at some of the offerings that are out there, right? Low cost, affordable, mass munitions, low cost cruise missiles. All these capabilities, we will still continue to build the exquisite because there are situations where we need the exquisite, whether that’s munitions or platforms. But to the maximum extent possible and practical, where we don’t need the exquisite, we want to develop and procure those kind of capabilities.

Heather Penney:

So the Air Force has a lot on its plate, from the collaborative combat aircraft to the next generation of aircraft like B-21 and F-47. There’s a lot that’s going new with the Air Force. How do we know if we’re getting it right and what are the metrics, markers, and measures that we should be looking for as we develop and introduce these new aircraft to the field? How do we know that we’re doing it right and when we need to adjust?

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

Okay. I’ll take that.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

I’ll start.

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

Go.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

So one of the big lessons learned from Midnight Hammer is what deep intelligence means and what it means to different communities. And I think we’re learning some very good lessons about that. So I spend a lot of time, I grew up in the F-16 CJ, so Wild Weasel, and then B-2. So that’s where my youth was spent. And both of those are very heavily dependent on an intel community that does things well over time, and then you can capitalize that in very key moments. And so that is something that I think will continue to be very, very important as we look at intel into the future, 10, 15 years ahead and understand not only the concepts of operation, but the deep engineering and the deep intelligence.

And so the opportunity then backs up into competition where you can say, “Hey, if we make these strategic choices, we can punish our adversaries decisions today by how they’re configuring their force with how we configure our force and our force design.” So we get even beyond the joint war fighting concept and say, “The strategy that they are enacting, we can punish that as well.” And so that is very heavily dependent on a very strong apparatus for intelligence and the ability to say, “What is the decision that makes conflict less likely because we have built ourselves in a way that makes it less likely?”

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

I think great points, Armo. And I would just note that current operations certainly provides us great insight into what’s working, what we need to fix. Then you go into some of our large scale department level exercises, Bamboo Eagles, et cetera, that really provides some of the impetus to make some changes maybe within the next fight up. We are building a digital war gaming capability called War Matrix that then starts to get after the longer term capabilities that we need. Because we’re digitizing it and using AI, we’ll go away from a chief’s Title X war game that we would spend six months preparing for, go into the ultimate two-week event, get really one or two good looks at the future of conflict with multiple moves over several days, and really get a Monte Carlo of one of what the future force needs to look like.

By digitizing and using AI in this war matrix, we are then able to churn both within the war game, speed up the preparation for the war game, and then pull the data out of the war game so that we can do multiple iterations afterwards to continue to see what moves the needle. And then again, what reostats we can adjust to maximize the payment, back to the, how do we be able to afford that force? If you can turn down the dial on one capability and turn up the dial on a less expensive or less exquisite capability and achieve the same campaign results, that’s a win.

Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, USAF (Ret.):

No, safety officers have always complained they don’t get credit for the accidents that didn’t happen. And if you’re in the business that you are all in, we don’t get credit for the wars that didn’t happen, but ultimately that’s a large part of the measure of our success as we’re able to deter war or if we are not able to or we’re able to bring it to an end on terms to pursue our fellow citizens’ ability to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s a really hard report card. It’s really hard to do the report cards along the way, but ultimately that’s the goal.

Heather Penney:

Well, thank you. Any final words for the audience before they leave today?

Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, USAF (Ret.):

I’ll go first. I want to thank Mr. Lawhead and General Kunkel and their team that are driving away on this idea of forced design. Again, you’re not sure if the audience really wants you to or not. They say they do, but you got to deliver a product that’s useful. You’ve got to have influence on the eights of the world eventually, or it doesn’t matter what you did. If you can’t bring products that are understandable and people buy into and focus there.

I think the Air Force has an opportunity with a national security strategy focused on homeland defense and long range power projection to achieve our goals, to tell its story and get the resources that we need to be able to both prepare to deter the PRC and others in a future war and to modernize and make life good for you and all of you that are still serving. So I’ll just conclude by saying thank you for you and your family and for your continued service to your country in its time of need. There are ways to get out of it and yet you’re still here. So thanks very much.

Lt. Gen. Jason Armagost:

No, I would offer maybe to that very point, I think the national security strategy, national defense strategy are providing us the opportunity to make those generational decisions based on the very specific focus that does exactly what General Holmes just said, which is defend the homeland and project power.

And so within that guidance, it gets very complex, very fast, but bottom line is the opportunity to make those choices is now presented to all of us in how we tell the story, but then also how we do things differently maybe than the way we have been doing them. And so that is a dirty business and a hard business, and I also echo the thanks for those that are in those trenches doing that.

Mr. Thomas J. Lawhead:

Yeah. Just to piggyback on those fine comments, if you’ve looked at, listened to any of the panels this week, this is a team sport, right? This is family and together, both with industry, with the requirers, with the operators, with the acquirers, the program offices, the PAEs, the resourcers, together, if we’ve learned one thing, we have to iterate and we have to collaborate to get to successful outcomes. If we continue to do that, I’m pretty confident we’ll get to where we need to be. Thank you so much for your attention and travel safely.